Monday, January 13, 2014

Winter season focuses on teaching nutrition to students at seven schools

Last week, a dozen or so DC SCORES coaches sat around a table in our office eating potato chips.

Wait. What?

Let us explain. The coaches were participating in an exercise that is included in DC SCORES' Power of Choice winter nutrition program, which begins after school today at seven schools throughout Washington, DC. For the next six weeks, students will spend two days a week learning about nutrition and healthy living and two days practicing soccer indoors as part of the scaled-down winter season.

During nutrition lessons, students will be guided through a series of exercises that help them learn about things such as calories, good fats versus bad fats, portion control and more. They'll also gets hands-on experience learning how to prepare healthy snacks and meals.

But back to the potato chips. Coaches learned from the exercise that eating just 15 Lays potato chips equals 150 calories consumed. And even after we had all danced for 5 minutes before the bag of chips was passed around, it would have taken half an hour of dancing -- we learned -- to burn off the 150 calories.

Wow.

The lesson? Eat in moderation, but also know that consuming healthy foods is only half of being healthy. You must exercise, too.

And that, in a nutshell, is what the winter program is all about -- combining healthy eating with physical activity through soccer.

"My hope is we're giving them the knowledge of what it means to live a healthy and active lifestyle," Program Director Cory Chimka said. "We're giving them the skills and tools and that hands-on experience that they can take to their families and say, 'This a healthy snack I can make for us with things that are accessible to me from the corner store on the end of the block.'"

Watch the embedded video for a more in-depth overview of the DC SCORES winter program, and follow the activities throughout the next six weeks on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook by searching the hashtag #DCSCORESWinter.